Showing posts with label Nachiket Pantvaidya. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nachiket Pantvaidya. Show all posts
The year OTT emerged as the biggest winner
8:25 AM
Juhi Chakraborty (HINDUSTAN TIMES; December 31, 2020)
The pandemic and the resulting Coronavirus lockdown played a crucial role in scaling up content consumption in the OTT space. The lockdown phase acted as a catalyst in shifting content availability to digital, based on the evolving consumption habits of the viewer who is now constantly available on digital touch points, converting fence-sitters to subscribers.
“One of the major content consumption trends we’ve seen this year is that earlier 60% of our consumers would come from the top tier 1 cities, and 40% would come from tier 2 and 3 in the months preceding the lockdown. Now it’s the opposite,” notes Nachiket Pantvaidya, CEO, ALT Balaji and group COO, Balaji Telefilms.
In addition, the audience mindset has drastically changed, with the desire to pay for quality content. This is bound to create large audience pools whether for original content, movies, music, news, games or sports.
“It redefined entertainment in the sense that it made cinema accessible to people in a very difficult year. The OTT industry has challenged us also to think outside the box, think of narratives that push creative boundaries,” shares producer Anand Pandit, whose film The Big Bull is headed to the web.
In terms of viewership, business, subscription, and acquisition of projects for the platforms, there has been a massive change this year for digital platforms. “Our active subscription grew 2.6 times versus November 2019. Our engagement grew 1.3 times and average subscription grew three times. The preferred language was Hindi, followed by Telugu. The preferred genre was crime and thriller,” a ZEE5 spokesperson shared.
Consumers had been used to one kind of entertainment habit — going to the theatre for a weekend movie and/or sitting in front of TV. But when fresh content stopped coming to the TV and theatres shut for months, it broke the inertia about OTT. “We posted a growth of 6.9 million paid subscribers which is the largest six-month growth for us ever,” says Ali Hussein, CEO, Eros Now India.
Ferzad Palia, head of Voot Select, Youth, Music and English Entertainment, Viacom18, says, “Even after lockdown was lifted, we see good growth across the board, both ad supported business and subscription business. We also shot and created the world’s first full-blown series from home — The Gone Game.” Based on these positive trends, it will be interesting to see if this growth trajectory will continue in the future as well.
Dream Girl: Janak Toprani alleges plagiarism; Raaj Shaandilyaa vouches for the novelty of script
8:06 AM
Upala KBR (MID-DAY; September 6, 2019)
Days after the trailer of Ayushmann Khurrana-starrer Dream Girl released, the makers have been accused of plagiarism by Janak Toprani (right). Toprani argues that his 2017 release, Call For Fun, bears resemblance to Balaji Telefilms' production, which sees Khurrana slip into the appearance of a woman. He claims to have approached Balaji with his script on two occasions but was turned down. "After they let go of the project, I got a financier and [made] the movie last year," he says, quick to add that Ekta Kapoor was not part of the discussion he had with the production.
He took action after a friend intimated him about the resemblance between the films. "After the trailer released, we took a week to consult a few lawyers. Then, I tried to call Nachiket Pantvaidya [CEO, Balaji] but he did not answer my call," says the director, who has shared the subsequent e-mails he wrote to Balaji, with mid-day. "If Dream Girl is similar to my film, I will file a legal case. I want credit as the writer and royalty rights."When contacted, Dream Girl director Raaj Shaandilyaa (left) took ownership of the film's concept. "The idea belongs to me and my co-writer since 2010. We have also registered it. If the concerned director's film was not commercially successful, why would anybody replicate his idea?"
Ekta Kapoor gets IP rights of upcoming show to stream episodes on her digital platform after 24 hours
8:10 AM
Kapoor procures IP rights of upcoming show to stream episodes on her digital platform 24 hours after they air on TV
Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; May 21, 2018)
In a first of its kind development, Ekta Kapoor’s production house has managed to crack a deal with Sony Entertainment to procure the rights to stream her upcoming show for the channel on her digital platform. Episodes from Kapoor’s Dil Hi Toh Hai, starring Karan Kundra, will stream on her OTT platform, ALTBalaji, 24 hours after they air on television. The permissions come as a result of the ownership of the intellectual property (IP) rights of the show, which, in this case, rests with Kapoor’s Balaji Telefilms Limited. While the IP rights of TV shows usually rest with the channel, Siddharth Kumar Tewary has been the only other producer to secure the rights for his show, Porus.
Confirming the news to mid-day, a source close to the production house termed the development as a significant step towards strengthening the position of a production house in the creation of show. Nachiket Pantvaidya, Group COO and CEO ALTBalaji, said, “With widespread penetration of the Internet and smartphones in India, we launched ALTBalaji to acquire new viewers globally, as these users are not encumbered by restrictions posed by TV — both as a device and as a format. The retention of a TV show’s rights by Balaji marks a major shift in the industry.”
Dil Hi Toh Hai, also starring Poonam Dhillon, is a family drama centered around industrialists who deal in the pharmaceuticals business. Set to air on TV from the first week of June, it sheds light on the relationships between siblings, who respect each other despite their differences.
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